Fact-checking fact-checkers

"Independent fact checkers" like Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post love counting up when Donald Trump repeats something he flagged as False. So what happens when fact-checkers keep repeating their own canards? See PolitiFact during President Trump's rally in North Carolina on Monday night.

The partisan elasticity of the "independent fact-checkers" will be tested by Joe Biden in this presidential campaign. The Washington Post brutally critiqued Biden's moving story of a story not wanting a medal as recounted at a Hanover, New Hampshire campaign stop. "In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony." But Snopes.com bizarrely rated the Biden story as a "Mixture" (or Half True), not a complete factual collapse.

Twitchy editor Greg Pollowitz noted on Saturday that PolitiFact is so senstive about Joe Biden that it gave a "Mostly False" rating to a Facebook post showing a photo of Biden holding hands with former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd: "PolitiFact has done it again, this time ruling that a 100% real photo of Joe Biden with former KKK leader Robert Byrd is mostly false because the caption referred to Byrd as a Grand Wizard and not his correct title of Exalted Cyclops."

We wouldn't normally evaluate a "fact check" when it lines up with all the available facts. But it can be noteworthy when Democrats are tagged as "Four Pinocchios" False. Both the Washington Post Fact Checker and FactCheck.org flagged Senators and presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren for incorrectly claiming Michael Brown was "murdered" in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson.

On August 1, PolitiFact took meticulous exception to a new Trump ad that shows NBC debate moderator Savannah Guthrie asking ten Democrat presidential candidates in June "Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants." The announcer said "These Democrats support giving illegal immigrants free health care at our expense." PolitiFact proclaimed this was "MOSTLY FALSE," because they didn't say "free health care" by raising their hand!

President Donald Trump just can't be correct about anything having to do with Baltimore, right? Well, when a Baltimore television station, WJZ, fact checked a White House claim that Baltimore has a higher murder rate than the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, perhaps they expected that assertion would be proven false. So imagine their surprise at what their fact check revealed.

The liberal "fact checking" website Snopes.com is presently engaged in a frenzy of defense of "The Squad," especially Rep. Ilhan Omar. This one was especially interesting: "Are U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar and AOC Polling at 8 Percent, 21 Percent Respectively?" Snopes declared this was "Mostly False," complaining "We know of no credible polls" that would find such a thing.

The astringently humorless "fact check" squad at Snopes.com just keeps ripping the Babylon Bee website, painting their satire as "misinformation." This time, Ellie Gardey at the Daily Caller forced Snopes to revise their "fact check" and add actual facts.

The Washington Post Fact Checker team promises "We will strive to be dispassionate and non-partisan, drawing attention to inaccurate statements on both left and right. But we also fact check what matters -- and what matters are people in power." Eyeroll, please! On Thursday, Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo posted an article titled "Fact-checking lawmakers’ claims during the Mueller hearings." They picked on six legislators as dubious....and all six were Republicans.

PolitiFact underlined its hypersensitivity to attacks on liberals on Monday by declaring a "Viral Image" of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be "FALSE." They protested PJ Media writer Jim Treacher having fun with staged photos under the headline "AOC Weeps Over Empty Parking Lot." She was weeping for immigrants, not parking! PolitiFact ruled the humor was "FALSE."

One interesting omission from The New York Times is a vital 2020 issue that the Times isn’t fact-checking Donald Trump on anymore: His accusations that Democrats favor “open borders.” Perhaps that’s because even some of the paper’s liberal columnists are worried that too many Democratic candidates, by pushing for the abolition of ICE and decriminalization of illegal border crossings, are in favor of de facto “open borders.” Qiu did so most vigorously in June 2018 with the bluntly headlined “No, Democrats Don’t Want ‘Open Borders.’”

The "fact checkers" at Snopes.com are running to the defense of liberal Democrats again in a July 10 post on Rep. Frederica Wilson in an article headlined "Did Rep. Frederica Wilson Advocate Prosecuting People Who ‘Make Fun’ of Congress?" The answer is yes. But David Mikkelsen at Snopes insisted "context is key," that conservative media outlets like the Washington Times and the Daily Wire skipped over how Wilson was responding to rude Facebook memes.

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